


Scrap

by Iron



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe: Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Disabled Character, Gen, Offscreen Violence, Rodimus is not okay, TW: Medical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23256022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iron/pseuds/Iron
Summary: Scrap doesn’t know who the red faced mechs are; he just knows they’re annoying.The crew of the Lost Light think they know who this mech is, or should be. They just want to bring him home.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 38





	Scrap

Spaceports are cold, bleached, officious things in the civilized parts of space. They are filled with officials in uniform, law enforcers, and clean members of proper crew vessels. 

This is not that kind of spaceport. Scrap walks out with hands tucked behind his head, bright white eyes taking in the alien ‘port with excitement. His limp would leave him looking like easy pickings if he weren’t so much larger than many of the other species on the ‘port, but they give him a wide berth. There’s a gun magnetized to his hip to warn away anyone who’s dumb enough to go up against him despite his size, and a long, sharpened hunk of metal magnetized to his back like a knife, for people who still don’t get the idea. 

Here, they do. He has a list of things that the Quartermaster wants picked up taped to the back of his left hand, a list of places to visit taped to the back of the other, and doesn’t hesitate to go on his way. The sharp, dark, cramped handwriting is easier for him to read than the captain’s cursive, but in the bleaching, too bright light of the ‘port even that is hard to discern. 

His optics flick to and fro, taking in the new species, the kiosks merchants have set up, the screaming creatures hocking their wares. His engine sputters in an uneven purr of happiness as he looks for a... He glances down to read his hand. A ‘microprocessing dual-sided three disk motherboard for a R6...’

Sighing, he looks at where he’s supposed to go. Someone there can read it for him and tell him what he’s looking for. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches sight of bright blue and white metal. He hurries his step a little, his engine giving off a low, unhappy grind when the shape steps further into his field of vision. Big, blue. Metal. The low purr of a perfectly tuned engine. Staring at him, following him.

Robot. Robot like him, autonomous, and Scrap hisses under his breath. _These guys again_. Still, he stops obligingly for them. Might as well get it out of the way now. 

The blue robot stops, stares at him. Its eyes, bright blue, go wide and pale. 

Scrap is expecting the usual look of disgust or disbelief. He’s not a pretty robot , not well put together. Some of his armor, mostly on his shoulders and his hips, is bubbled and warped. The left half of his skull is fucked up, a mess of welds, scraped away paint, dead metal sheets to hide delicate components where the original metal was unsalvageable, and his optics are just pinpricks of white light behind frosted white glass. His crew had done what they could but there are just some things Xandarians can’t fix. He knows how he looks and it ain’t something you go out of your way to stare at, at least when you’re not trying to be an asshole. 

So he’s expecting the look of obvious disgust. He gets it from aliens enough, after all. Other robots looking at him like he’s something nasty they’ve stepped in is just frelling _expected_ at this point. 

“Rod...” The blue and white ‘bot says. Wide, bright blue optics flare white as he stares at him. 

Which means it’s going to be one of _those_ ‘bots. The ones that think he’s someone else. 

Scrap sighs, turns, and meets the ‘bot full-face on. 

Typical, the ‘bot rears back. 

...Not so typical, the ‘bot still looks at him like Scrap should know who he is. 

“Rodimus?” The ‘bot finishes, face slack. He’s a big ‘bot, but one of those with the red face on their armor, so Scrap isn’t worried about being attacked. It couldn’t hurt to talk to him. 

“Look, man, I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not ‘Rodimus’.” Scrap tries not to clench his fists, since doing it too tight would inevitably rip the papers taped there and require him to go back to the ship for another copy. But it’s hard. A lot of the red-face ‘bots think he’s the same guy. Some asshole that he always managed to take the fall for despite not _being_ the asshole. 

Rodimus must have been the bag, suitcase, and shipful of dicks.

“But your - “ 

“EMF thingy, yeah yeah, heard that one before. Look, man, I’m not. M’name’s Scrap.” He grins as winningly as he can at the ‘bot, the scars warping the left half of it into something roguish, like he’d practiced. “Not Rod-whatever it is. Nice try, though.” 

The ‘bot - he doesn’t flinch, not quite, but his ramrod straight posture slumps a little before he fixes it. It makes Scrap almost feel bad for the guy - he musta been really sure that Scrap was whoever he was hoping he’d be - but not bad enough to let the guy actually think he was whoever he was looking for. That’d just be cruel. Whoever it was. 

...He should go run errands before he has errands to run. 

“Well, I gotta go -” 

“Holy slag bagged and tagged, frag happened to your _face_ mech?!” And there was another one. 

Of course there was another one. 

At this point, looking down is almost instinctual. Everyone around him is usually so much shorter than him, after all. The ‘bot’s tiny, red and white, and maybe comes up to the blue one’s hip. Maybe. He’s also square and possessing the kind of face that makes you want to punch it. 

“Space pirates,” Scraps deadpans. “Space pirates fucked my face up.” He kind of wants to shoot the ‘bot for bringing it up. Isn’t ignoring scars like that common courtesy or something? 

But then the big one’s gonna get angry and he really doesn’t want to deal with that. “You need a medic or something? Cause we’ve got one on-board and I think you really need one, mech, I think I can see your processor from here, oh Primus seriously talk about purge-riffic,” He goes on, but his words have already melted into a slurred, buzzy mess in Scrap’s audios. He’s not the best at keeping track of long trains of thought, especially other people’s. 

Scrap shrugs. “Look,” he interrupts the ‘bot, “I don’t need a medic. I’m functioning fine.” That’s a lie, but fuck all if he’s gonna admit it. He doesn’t want these ‘bots to pity him or anything. He just wants to go on with his life. 

The small ‘bot - barely taller than the typical organic native to these parts of space - snorts. “I can see your components,” he snaps, “I’m not supposed to be able to see your components!” He’s almost screeching by the end of his panicked statement. 

Scrap can’t help the flinch that has him brushing his fingers over the broken biolights along his torso - slagged and left unrepaired because he has no idea how to fix something like that - where his internals click and whir through the opening in his plating. He’s fine. 

He’s not dead, so he’s fine. 

“Look,” the little one says, and something pops up on Scrap’s HUD. A message? It’s a long string of numbers with a ‘decline’ or ‘accept’ button, anyways. That’s how incoming Comms look on the ship, right? So a message. Obviously. 

He jumps when it opens itself. “How’d you do that?” He accepts the message anyways. The long string of numbers flickers and trades itself for the word ‘Swerve’. The little one’s designation? 

They both look agast. It feels like it should be funny, seeing the big one’s dropped jaw. He’s not amused. “Seriously, stop looking at me like that. How’d you do that? What’d you _do_?” 

“I... sent you a communication ping?” The little one says. 

Scrap grunts, cheeks flooding with heat. “It’s not in the format I’m used to.” He’s not used to a format at all, but these guys don’t need to know that, do that? Nah, nah, they don’t. “Why’d you ping me?” 

“Because I want to make sure you’ve got a mech you can talk to,” the one who’s Swerve (maybe?) says. “Mechanoids have to stick together, right?” He grins. It’s obnoxious. 

Scrap really wants to shoot him. “Sure. Whatever.” His engine is turning over, rough and ugly sounding. He really just wants out of this conversation. He has _things_ to do, even if he doesn’t actually remember what they are anymore. Damn mechs distracted him for too long. 

He looks down at his hands. 

He needs to get a... 

Mind already light years away, he wanders off to go complete his chores. 

\--

He sees more robots again when he’s heading back to his ship, and it jars the previous incident from his files before it can get corrupted enough to delete itself. They’ve got another one with them, this time big and red and white and bulky, no visible weapons but you can never really tell with the robots. Scrap once accidentally shot someone with a tiny gun hidden in his forearm because he hadn’t known it was there. He’d been thoroughly stripped down to his base components and his weaponry systems shut down after that, but the incident had taught him that even the safest looking robot could be a walking weapon.

Frowning, he shifts the bulk of his supplies to one hand, ready to grab the gun at his hip if the situation called for it. He doesn’t _want_ to fight, but that doesn’t mean he can’t. “You still here?” 

The tiny one grins at him friendly-like. “Well mech, you said you didn’t want to come to our ship to meet our medic, so we thought we’d bring our medic to you! Ratchet here’s a bit of a grump but he’ll fix you up right if you give him the chance, I swear. We’re the good guys!” 

Scrap can’t hold back his snort. “Look, mech, I don’t need a medic,” and he doesn’t remember saying he didn’t want to check out their ship, but he certainly doesn’t want to now, “And I don’t want some strange robot messing with my internals or whatever.” He doesn’t relax, still tense, suspicious and afraid. 

The so-called Ratchet taps clean metal fingers against smooth painted forearms, arms crossed. His helm tilts to the side, considering Flame’s ragged frame. Paint peeling, internals showing through missing biolights, plating warped and scarred where kibble has been torn away, optics frosted and white, he hardly looks the epitome of Cybertronian health. But then, that’s his business, isn’t it? Not nosy robots. 

“I’m surprised you’re still alive.” The medic mutters, and there’s that tone of disgust Scrap was looking for. 

“I’m hard to kill.” He snipes back, readjusting his load to walk back to his ship. “And I have places to be.” He storms off, leaving behind the small group of mechs in a fast limp before they can even think of following him. Even here, it’s easy to lose himself to the crowds, making it impossible for them to follow him. 

When he makes it back to his ship it’s with an aching hip and a disgruntled mood. Clissa hisses at him, the Xandarian Quartermaster yanking the most expensive of her supplies out of his arms and inspecting it with a keen, liquid black eye. “You di’n drop any a this when you’s a was comin back to here, did ya?” 

“No.” Scrap huffs, plating fluffing out as far as and where it can, offended. He shouldn’t be, seeing as how that was an issue back when he was still new to the ship and his body. Dropping things had been the least of the damages caused back then. He’d almost fallen on some of the soft, squishy Xandarians a few times, only saved from murder because they were slightly faster than gravity. 

Now he has more control, and feels like he should be allowed to feel offended over the assumption. He’s getting more repairs every week. Eventually his processor might even start working right again. 

“Good job, Scrap.” She hauls it back inside the ship, and he follows her inside. “Least dragging you in hasn’t been a complete waste of supplies.” 

He makes a face at her back as the ramp closes. Apparently this was the last of the business they had to complete in the spaceport, because the lights change from shore leave blue to disembarking orange. That means they’re done. No one in or off the ship. 

Scrap thinks about the comm number in his helm, but only for a moment. Those red face fuckers were more trouble than they were worth. Better if he never saw them again. And space is big. He probably never will. 

Better off that way.


End file.
